When I was a kid, the country went through a full-fledged Dungeons & Dragons hysteria, where the fantasy role-playing game was accused of everything from turning kids onto Satanism to encouraging them to kill themselves.
Decades later, we’ve now reached a point where D&D is seen as sort of a harmless, if incredibly geeky pastime.
But isn’t there a third option? Dungeons & Dragons isn’t a dangerous, evil force in the world, nor is it just harmless fun; it’s actually one of the most worthwhile activities ever created, and there is literally nothing better for turning a kid into a thoughtful, creative, passionate, open-minded adult.
Almost everything I know today I learned from Dungeons & Dragons. And almost everything I’m passionate about, I first discovered while playing the game.
I started playing Dungeons & Dragons at age twelve, when my friend Tim asked for, and received, a “starter” box set of the game for Christmas.
I immediately loved it. It gave a focus to all those lazy afternoons with my friends. It was something for us all to be passionate about, an endless countryside for us to discover and explore — endless because we made it up ourselves.
But it didn’t just focus those afternoons with my friends; it focused the rest of my life too.
Before the game, I’d had little interest in reading for pleasure. For me, books were something that were assigned in school — staid, musty tales that said nothing about the things I was interested in and had absolutely no relevance to my life.
But because I was so enamored with the world of D&D, I started reading fantasy books. For the first time in my life, I realized, “Hey, books aren’t necessarily boring! Sometimes they can even be really, really interesting!” It was a revelation. In months, I was devouring every fantasy book I could get my hands on — even long, complicated sagas that I wouldn’t have looked twice at before (Stephen R. Donaldson was, and still is, my favorite author).
In school, I’d always hated history. It had always been presented to me as nothing more than a long list of dates to be memorized.
But in the world of D&D, in the adventures we were concocting for each other, history came alive. And why wouldn’t it? We were literally living it! And like almost every virgin D&D player, I immediately embarked on my own extracurricular study of weaponry, of myths and fables, of medieval life — even castle-building.
Philosophy and ethics? At my Catholic grade school, that meant just another list to memorize, this time of picky little rules to follow.
It was while playing D&D that I discovered the notion of “alignment” — the idea that everyone has a point-of-view in life, and that few people think of themselves as “evil.” Instead, ethics necessarily follow from one’s perspective. This acknowledgment of the obviously relative nature of all things made my head feel like a balloon; I could almost feel it expanding on my shoulders.
Even better, by implicitly granting me the right to make my own ethical choices, and by having me role-play different choices and then forcing me to accept the consequences of my actions, I think the game made me a much more ethical person. It definitely made me a far more broad-minded one.
In school, I had absolutely no interest in debate or public presentations. My sixth grade presentation was on Bolivia, and I literally could not have cared less.
But because D&D involves such an elaborate set of rules, many of which are, uh, ambiguous, an essential part of Dungeons & Dragons means arguing a case, both to your fellow players and to the dungeon master.Year later, in college, professors would always say, “You did debate in high school, didn’t you?” I never knew what they were talking about — until it finally occurred to me that I had, in fact, spent every weekend of my high school years engaged in passionate debate with some of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met.
Before D&D, I’d never thought of myself as a storyteller, or a performer in any way. But when you’re the dungeon master, you’re required to be a performer, acting out the role of the narrator and dozens of other characters — and you’d better be an incredibly quick-thinking performer at that, since most of what you do is improvisation in response to something your players did that you didn’t expect.
If you write your dungeons yourself, as we usually did, you’re also forced to confront the notions of character motivation, the importance of a good antagonist, of theme, of rising tension and resolution.
In short, if he’s going to keep the attention of his players, a dungeon master must quickly intuit all the elements of dramatic structure.
Best of all, you tell your stories in direct engagement with your audience. If that doesn’t tell you exactly what does, and doesn’t, work when it comes to storytelling, nothing will.
Finally, there’s math. I didn’t like that either as a kid — more memorization, natch. Truthfully, I still hate it, but when you spend countless hours adding up dice-rolls in your head, you’re suddenly a whiz — and when your character’s life is at stake, you pick up statistics pretty quickly too!
Dungeons & Dragons would have been worth playing even if it built no “character” whatsoever — if it did nothing but entertain. And maybe this essay will do nothing but make today’s generation of kids less likely to play it; that’s probably how I would have reacted.
But the truth is, the game does so much more than entertain, and it’s about time it got credit for it.
As an adult, I’ve done a number of things for a living: teach at the high school and college level, and write novels, plays, and screenplays. Now I edit this website.
If it weren’t for Dungeons & Dragons, I couldn’t have done any of these things well.
If I hadn’t found D&D, would I have discovered some other passion as a kid? Video games? Sports? Horticulture? It’s possible. But it’s almost impossible to imagine that any of these activities would have given me such a long and varied list of skills and interests.
As an adult, I occasionally run into parents who mention that their children have discovered Dungeons & Dragons. They usually roll their eyes and shrug, as if to say, “At least they’re not out robbing liquor stores.”
I always tell them they’re wrong to dismiss the game so casually; I try to tell them all the things I’ve written here.
They never listen to me. They always say something stupid like, “What kind of game is it if you can’t ever win?” The stereotypes run too deep. To them, D&D means being silly, dressing up like an elf and rooting around in sewers. They can’t dismiss it fast enough.
In a way, I’m sad — sad that they don’t appreciate and support the passionate, creative, intelligent, interesting kid they’re probably raising (no thanks to them).
But mostly I’m sad that they themselves have to go through life with such a narrow, limited perspective. That wouldn’t be the case if one of their friends had ever introduced them to D&D — but now, of course, it’s probably too late.
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Nice! TOTALLY AGREE!
When I found your twitter reference in writer’s digest. If for nothing more than it led me here! I was one of those kids raised to believe that D&D was an evil game that would lure you blindfolded to the depths of hell and down a path of drug-abusing, homicidal/suicidal negativity.
I bought into it and was a good little girl. My imagination didn’t really take off until I stumbled across my first fantasy novel and even then I was afraid of D&D. Now I not only play it but several spin offs as well. I may have started even sooner if it wasn’t for the extreme fear-instilling stories I heard growing up, coupled with such easy dismissals. I started playing it around the same time that I started asking tough questions and think my own thoughts.
I would definitely be proud if my son takes an interest in it in the future…though grandma might grumble about it. There are several games out there that can teach us more than people seem to realize.
Awesome article! Nat 20 *wink*
I appreciate that! (And it IS interesting how people find each other online…)
wow,it’s nice.
This actually made me cry a little.
Thanks, Jeff.
Hrm…my internal editor is over-powering me, sorry.
Somehow the very first part of my post got garbled, I meant to say “I am glad I decided to follow you on twitter after I read the referral in Writer’s Digest.”
Organized religion and D&D can be fine together. The local Catholic priest who was a friend of my parents gave me my first Dragonlance book and recommenced D&D to me. Great guy.
I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing, or maybe just for the area I grew up in specifically, but I’ve never really heard of dungeon and dragons as more than a passing reference in a film over here in England. However, we used to play Warhammer 40k and I know that a couple of schools even have clubs to play it now. I can’t say that I know much about D&D but I think it would be fair to say (after a quick look at the wiki page) that they are fairly similar and perhaps take similar roles in teaching what you mention, even without as clearly defined a narrator.
I think so too. It’s really not such D&D as it is role-playing games in general.
Warhammer came out a fair bit later than D&D - part of a wave of popularity along with RuneQuest, Car Wars, and a bunch of others. If memory serves, Warhammer was from a British company, which might be why you got introduced to that one.
Hey, don’t give up hope for those poor parents! I didn’t discover the game until late last year(though I was reading the books long before that), when a friend of mine said he wanted to DM a campaign he had an idea for and I pulled a few friends in on it. (Now, however, a few has grown into a MASSIVE amount; we have six players plus the DM. NEVER AGAIN! Talk about frustration…)
I used to play warhammer 40k as well. Very good game. Lots of fun.
A most excellent post, Brent. I’m a fantasy novelist, D&D game designer, voracious reader, grammar/punctuation stickler, and (I like to think) all-around versatile and well-rounded person, and I owe so much of it to Dungeons & Dragons.
Really, you hit the nail on the head with this article.
Thanks, Jeff. And I like your description of yourself!
Thankfully, I had parents who loved fantasy, and that was my jump into the genre. And my siblings have played D&D with their friends. But I am heartily ashamed and disappointed in the fact that I have never actually played myself, and it doesn’t look too likely in my current situation. It’s not that I’m uninterested - I’ve never had the opportunity.
One day though! It’ll happen!
(The closest I’ve come is playing RPGs that are based on DnD, like Baldur’s Gate, Planescape Torment, Neverwinter Nights, etc.)
A fantastic summary of our experiences, thank you Brent. And one more thing — in order to take on the omnipotent and omniscient Dungeon Master, I believe I learned a helluva lot about true teamwork from D&D!
Don’t give up on all those non-gamers yet. My husband and I still game and in the last year we convinced 40-something friends of ours to try D&D for the first time and they loved it. Now whenever we game, their kid and ours (ages 9, 8, and 6) hang out with us and roll attacks/damage for almost every combat. The future is bright!
I know, and thanks for the encouraging word! I’m just still a little bitter from all the nasty things I’ve heard said over the years…
My son and his friends played D&D and other RPGs at our home all the time. And I listened, as he grew, and heard him develop his own moral code. Very few parents get to hear their kids developing their own notions of right and wrong but that’s what RPGs gave me. After the games, we’d talk about what happen and he’d wrestle with what happened, thinking out loud.
You can see where religious types would hate that.
Yes, exactly! It’s really the opposite of traditional religion, which is imposed from outside, (often) without regard to logic and (often) using guilt and shame. It’s much more organic, humanistic, and — I’d argue — genuine and long-lasting and “real.”
Oh, bah. Organized religion and D&D can be fine together. The local Catholic priest who was a friend of my parents gave me my first Dragonlance book and recommenced D&D to me. Great guy.
Although…my friends do has a line about me “He’s playing a paladin, we don’t know what class he is yet but he’s playing a paladin…”
Eh, still, organized religion and D&D don’t have any real issues with each other it’s more the rigid minded people that tend to gravitate toward organized religion than religion itself. I must admit there are a lot of those sorts of people giving us a bad name though…
Brent,
Nice article and well put. Nothing unleashes a young person’s potential as much as permission to imagine wildly, and DnD does exactly that. I write fantasy novels for Wizards of the Coast (the company that now owns DnD) and that realization helps keep me at it (as well as the simply joy of writing/creating).
And hey, you forgot to mention High Gygaxian in your list of things that DnD teaches. If Gary didn’t add to your vocabulary via the ADnD DMG and PHB, then you are a better man than I.
You didn’t mention vocabulary building.
I always tell people that I credit D&D (and Gary Gygax) with at least 100 points on my verbal SAT score.
Where else does a 13 year old learn the meanings of words like:
Lycanthrope
Relic
Tome
Exlixr
Faerie
Tetrahedron
Ziggurat
Corporeal
Polearm
Not to mention the names of tons and tons of mythological creatures and characters and medevil arms and armor!
When we bought TSR at Wizards of the Coast we were vastly excited and those of us that had lived though the beginning of WotC, the five people working as volunteers in my basement, before our first product, before Talaslanta, before magic, we were a small group of people that shared a similar heritage to what was shared in this article. We began WotC with the idea that we wanted to create games that stimulated social interaction and to create materials for gaming that expressed a higher level of complexity. We’d grown up and we wanted our games to grow up, too. We LOVED D&D and played it and had it as a cement for a group of people that knew one another from highschool and college and it inspired us to step out and up and reach high and create games and environments that would stimulate social interactions. We loved the image of a new gamer walking into a new gaming store and opening up their first magic deck or booster and that simple sound could attract others in the store to step up and see what that new guy had found in his cards.
Thank you for your article. It took me back and reminded me of my roots, roots of which I am very proud to have follow me around.
Cheers,
Cathleen S. Adkison
Founder Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
I have played D&D for over a 15 year period. The people I met while playing this game and AD&D were and are special. Most of the folks I played the game with have remained good friends. The game gave me an excellent outlet for my creative energy and allowed me to spend pleasant hours with good folks. The group I played with heard all the stories about how evil the game was and how it would corrupt us. We just smiled, shook our heads, and kept on playing. Personally, I would not trade the time I spent playing, writing, and working with this game for anything.
The points about what D & D can do for a child’s development are right on. And it’s not just D & D–any rpg of the 70s, 80s, and 90s would have the same effect. Dungeons and Dragons is not the be-all and end-all of role-playing gaming–there are dozens of other games out there, and they all have contributions that will improve the lives of serious gamers. I’ll just mention a few: Runequest, Traveller, G.U.R.P.S., Toon, Star Wars roleplaying, Call of Cthulhu, Rolemaster, and on and on.
In the 21st century the rpgs still flourish, but it is the mmorpgs that grew out of them that are truly influencing and teaching children (and adults) how to cope with our increasingly complicated world. Nothing beats involvement for learning.
I agree with everything written. I will add my feelings on mmorpgs. I don’t feel that mmorpgs are comparable with regard to many of the issues discussed in this article. You don’t learn writing as much (no GM), math (mostly done for you), debate (certainly not oral debate), etc. But I think the difference is even more important with the issue of ethics. Anonymity in mmorpgs brings many to questionable moral decisions. Table-top rpgs force you to face your peers when you’re deciding if you should torture “this guy” to find out where a treasure chest is or kill “that guy” because he stole a gold piece from you or ignore a barmaid getting slapped around. How we’re viewed by society for our decisions is an important piece of our moral code. It demonstrates empathy for differing positions and helps us avoid decisions based on a short-term emotional charge. Often, ethical behavior in mmorpgs is just imposed on you (ie, you can only fight in this location) rather than determined by you. I’m off my soapbox. Can you tell I’m biased toward table-top RPing?
Some really good points, Doug. I don’t play these as much as table-top, so I haven’t given them as much thought. But…yup. And I think all your reasons are WHY I don’t play them as much…
(Although in their defense, for many friends, they DO have a large social componant. And their convenience means they play much more often.)
I post in agreement with the OP, but I want to add something in. I was reading a thread on the old Shippenburg D&D camp, and someone mentioned that their mother sent them because it was a “Pro-social” hobby.
I started with the Fantasy Trip, 4th ed T&T, as much as D&D, and all the positives mentioned before I agree with. But RPGs are what took my from timidity and put me on a stage, and introduced me to other people with similar proclivities.
And some of my original players in my 25 year old setting are STILL playing with me, and some of these people go back earlier.
A “Pro-social” hobby, indeed. Gaming taught me how to network decades before I kn ew what the term meant, taught me group dynamics almost a decade before college, taught me to do my research before speaking up before entering the workforce, and can take full credit for ingraining the leadership and flexibility skills in me as a child that allowed me to be the lead product manager of the largest dealership in my industry.
My 11 year old son is creating a campaign right now and he’s working really hard. He is super motivated to write, draw, refer to reference books and he only whines when he runs out of time to work at the end of the day.
Someone tell the Department of Education about this game!
Really!
It absolutely not agree
Dungeons & Dragons is my favorite game…
It seems to me, you are right
I have been playing D&D since 1974-75 as have most of my group here is how we turned out 2 Pastors ( still play ) 1 engineer ( still plays) 3 small business owners ( still plays) 2 Police officers ( still plays )our first DM was the elderly pastor of our Baptist church .
Education about this game!